Dire Beast vs Fevor for BM

In 5.3 patch new passive Blink Strikes now have +50% dmg at special ability claw/bite etc.
Fevor gain 100 energy for hunter and 100 energy for pet, have more uptime wild hunt, more arcan shots for more Cobra Strikes.

What sort of gear are you in? I, personally, show a measurable loss on FD when swapping to Fervor (about 2%).

Fervor is also pretty problematic for BM due to focus capping -- the reduced amount of focus, and added damage instead, from Dire Beast tends to be more manageable than a flood of focus for BM. Every time I tried playing with BM and Fervor since 5.0 hit, I realized that it was unusable for me, as it'd focus cap way, way too often (and then I'd also have to reapply Serpent Sting manually as well).

Fervor will provide a higher dps bc of the uptime it gives you on your pets basic attacks and give you a more constant flow of focus. If you look at the tooltips, DB gives 5 focus per hit. Most people will get 10-11 hits, so 50-55 focus. Fervor instantly gives you 50(as opposed to the build up of DB) and causes you to gain an additional 50 over 10 seconds. So you get 5 focus every second, for 10 seconds. So with ferver, you get the DB focus, you AND your pet get 50 focus instantly, and all you lose out on are the 10-11 attacks it provides. Which, for me last night on Lei Shin (to test this postulate) was about 240k damage every 30 seconds, with the loss of a cooldown, and 50 less focus than Fervor. With that 50 additional focus I could use 3 Arcane Shots (I will have generated 10 more focus while using the first 2 AS) which for me hit for 42k, and crit for 92k. My pet would also get 2 additional Bites in, hitting for 37k and critting for 74k. Assuming 0 crits, that is 210k damage. But, as most of my arcane shots crit, and most of my pets Bites crit, we can assume that at least 1 AS and 1 Bite would crit, giving an additional 90k damage, leading to 300k damage overall. And a free CD.

I like Fervor much more - it is reliable (no pet AI problems), it gives focus to your pet as well, it is NOT on the global cool down, it's burst of focus can help you get an important cast on time, the focus-over-time part is great during BWrath cause you can delay Cobra Shots, it works PERFECTLY with Beast Cleave due to the pet focus restore...

Overall i think Fervor is by far the best of that talent tree - Dire Beast may have some uses in PvP.

Fervor is better on bosses where your dire beast doesnt have 100% uptime and where aoe is involved. I havent tried fervor as BM but on SV at first I was focus capping a lot but now its manageable. The only problem with fervor is the focus burst which often leads to SS drop.

Dire beast will always sim higher but remember that the number of attacks is not always correct (sims are showing DB doing more dmg than it actually does). If you want to min/max you should switch between those 2 depending on the fight.

I like Fervor much more - it is reliable (no pet AI problems), it gives focus to your pet as well, it is NOT on the global cool down, it's burst of focus can help you get an important cast on time, the focus-over-time part is great during BWrath cause you can delay Cobra Shots, it works PERFECTLY with Beast Cleave due to the pet focus restore...

Overall i think Fervor is by far the best of that talent tree - Dire Beast may have some uses in PvP.

Pretty much /agree with this post. I can't even begin to tell you how frustrating it is when your summoned Dire Beast is stuck somewhere and is out of LoS with the target; not only have you wasted a global, but you also earn no focus or any DPS gain when this happens. Fervor is reliable, and gives you a great boost to focus especially when faced with a burst-y situation.

Ya know... the one thing you all are forgetting is how Fervor allows you to delay your higher trinket proc Serpent Stings from being forced to refresh by Cobra Shot.

You realize that is the reason all the hunters you've been copying off the armory use Fervor right? Not because of some sim and hypothetical dps the pet gets. It's because if Renataki's and Bad Juju proc and you time your Cobra Shot to land on the last second of Renataki's, then you use Arcane Shot and (explosive shot/kill command) to use all your focus and THEN use Fervor to continue using instant shots, avoiding refreshing that Serpent Sting - the damage on that Serpent Sting persists even after the trinkets wear off.

That's also why hunters use haste, not because is sims higher, but because it provides more RPPM procs to exploit in this way... and the damage difference is actually huge - last time I check on a target dummy the difference on a per tick basis between zero proc serpent stings and trinket procced serpent stings was a matter of like 15k per tick and it'll be higher with raid buffs. So if you can delay for 5-6 extra ticks of serpent sting beyond the proc it can be a matter of 80-100k extra damage for basically free... the extra pet basic attack focus and all that is icing on the cake, but secondary to the Serpent Sting tweaking.

Ya know... the one thing you all are forgetting is how Fervor allows you to delay your higher trinket proc Serpent Stings from being forced to refresh by Cobra Shot.

You realize that is the reason all the hunters you've been copying off the armory use Fervor right? Not because of some sim and hypothetical dps the pet gets. It's because if Renataki's and Bad Juju proc and you time your Cobra Shot to land on the last second of Renataki's, then you use Arcane Shot and (explosive shot/kill command) to use all your focus and THEN use Fervor to continue using instant shots, avoiding refreshing that Serpent Sting - the damage on that Serpent Sting persists even after the trinkets wear off.

That's also why hunters use haste, not because is sims higher, but because it provides more RPPM procs to exploit in this way... and the damage difference is actually huge - last time I check on a target dummy the difference on a per tick basis between zero proc serpent stings and trinket procced serpent stings was a matter of like 15k per tick and it'll be higher with raid buffs. So if you can delay for 5-6 extra ticks of serpent sting beyond the proc it can be a matter of 80-100k extra damage for basically free... the extra pet basic attack focus and all that is icing on the cake, but secondary to the Serpent Sting tweaking.

We learned something about Fervor today.

Is this actually a thing for BM? I'm going through logs and I only see Fervor when the fight involves Beast Cleave.
Not saying your wrong, it sounds correct but I wouldn't mind seeing some logs for info.

It does noticeably less damage for BM, but it's still a significant factor. There was discussions about BM's best way to extend the serpent stings since technically Dire Beast does marginally more damage than Fervor. Since obviously if you use Beastial Wrath at the last tick of Renataki's or even Juju, you'll be able to significantly extend the life of the Serpent Sting - but then you dont get the Beastial Wrath with the trinkets so that makes it basically a pointless wash at best - then it was this idea that, "Well at least Dire Beast is a useful way to extend Serp Sting by a global" - in the end I think the deciding factor is that Beastial Wrath has to be used during the duration of trinkets, but it's still nice to get the free damage by extending the Serpent Sting beyond the trinkets procs and that at the end of the day any damage you are losing out by not taking Dire Beast is subsidized by extending the serpent stings with Fervor, which becomes even more possible to extend the full duration due to BM's larger focus pool. - plus Fervor does sorta overall make shot selection easier as it gives you second chances if you erroneously don't have enough focus to Kill Command on cooldown... which although rare, does happen to me here and there.